Tag: tourism

Two decades ago, Metro Toronto urged tourists to “discover the feeling” while sampling its neighbourhoods and attractions. The focus of the late 1980s television spot that we’ve dug up today is the multitude of leisure activities the city offers. Viewers in markets like Cleveland and Detroit were enticed to check out ballet, fishing, gondola rides, horse racing, boutique shopping, bike taxis near the Gooderham Building, and Jim Clancy leading the Blue Jays to victory over the Indians or Tigers.

The producer’s sure-fire bet to bring in the crowds? Hire a pair of dueling fencers and a fog machine to lend an air of mystery and old-fashioned adventure to Casa Loma.

As for when the headliners came to play, Tony Bennett crooned at a Variety Club of Ontario fundraising gala in February 1988 while Reba McEntire took the stage for two nights at Massey Hall that October.

ADDITIONAL MATERIAL

Here’s an earlier version of the campaign, featuring Rochester native Chuck Mangione instead of Reba.

The lone surviving comment on the piece is typical of trolls with pseudonyms who are oh-so-happy to put down the city. From “Astoria”: “LOL Plezzzzz Toronto is such a boring place and non world class as its wannabe inhabitants claim – keep tryin’ tho!” My retort to this sort of shit: a city is what you make of it when you actually experience it.

Last year, we featured the television spots used during the latter half of the 1980s to encourage tourists to come to Toronto and “Discover the Feeling!” Today’s ad is an early print version of the campaign used to lure travellers from Motown into driving east on Highway 401. After a year of development by Camp Associates, the new tourism slogan was unveiled in 1984 as a replacement for “Toronto…Affectionately Yours,” which had been used since 1972.

Early reaction to the new slogan was summed up by Star columnist George Gamester: “’Discover the Feeling!’ doesn’t sound like much for $50,000. But then ‘I Love New York’ probably didn’t sound earth-shattering when first proposed, either.”

While people on the street seemed to be happy with the new slogan, describing it as “catchy,” “neat,” and “memorable,” a vocal group from Metro Toronto Council wasn’t. Suburban politicians grumbled that “Metropolitan Toronto” was mentioned in small print and that municipalities like Etobicoke and North York were ignored in favour of the core city. Public representatives with wounded egos made the media know that they were mad as hell that the word “Metro” wasn’t included in the new slogan, even though Camp Associates had discovered that its inclusion confused test audiences outside of the region. According to North York Alderman Betty Sutherland, “If we’re paying for this, I think it should be geared towards Metro Toronto…If you’re coming to visit you’re coming to see more than downtown.” In his characteristically understated style, North York Mayor Mel Lastman claimed that “I never felt more insulted in my life.” He felt the slogan didn’t paint a positive image like Buffalo’s “Talking Proud,” but told visitors to “take a gamble and come to Toronto to see if it’s still a dull city.” Lastman wasn’t crazy about the new logo either, noting that if it appeared on television, it wouldn’t prevent viewers “from going to the bathroom.”

Along with Etobicoke Controller Chris Stockwell (who noted, “I’ve seen better slogans on a used car lot”) and Scarborough Alderman Kurt Christensen, Lastman urged Metro Council to reject the slogan. Among the suggested alternatives were “Metro: Experience the Magic” (suggested by Stockwell) and “You Ought to See Us Now” (rejected by Camp Associates, favoured by Metro Chairman Paul Godfrey). After three hours of debate at the October 23, 1984 meeting of Metro Council, “Toronto—Discover the Feeling!” was approved by a twenty-two to ten vote. Bad feelings lingered on—Christensen failed in attempts to reopen the issue, while Stockwell was irate when only two out of twenty-two pictures in a new tourist brochure showed suburban sites (the Zoo and the Science Centre).

The slogan remained in use for the rest of the decade. Its replacement, “Couldn’t you use a little Toronto?,” was also greeted with underwhelming enthusiasm by Metro Council’s executive committee when it was rolled out in 1989, with Metro Councillor Howard Moscoe proving to be the only member to openly defend the new slogan and its starlit skyline logo.

Additional material from the June 9, 1984, August 25, 1984, and October 24, 1984 editions of the Globe and Mail; and the March 1, 1984, June 9, 1984, October 20, 1984, October 23, 1984, January 1, 1985, and May 3, 1989 editions of the Toronto Star.

Wouldn’t your friends appreciate it more if you were present for dinner? Unless you are rewarding them, do you trust your friends and clients enough not to blow your credit limit in a swanky establishment such as this restaurant?

Toronto was one of several Canadian cities featured in this late 1970s American Express campaign. All of the ads feature models who look too eager to serve cardmembers. It’s hard to tell whether the wide-eyed chef is as hammy as the pork products he uses, delighted the waitress is leaning on him and not the wine steward, or if the pressures of the kitchen have reached the point where he is plotting the demise of his fellow staffers.

Several classic 1970s restaurant decor elements are on display. The Tiffany lamp by the bar. Amber glassware. Furniture and panelling in hues of brown and orange. There are still a few venues around town where these elements remain in a non-ironic manner, which can be quite comforting.
We are curious if this actually was shot in Toronto or is merely a set in a New York photo studio.

For years, Toronto tourism ads have gotten a bad rap. These attempts to bring visitors to our fair city have a knack of running off the rails—try finding the love for the Toronto Unlimited campaign.

Today’s ad proves this is not a recent trend, even when the provincial government is the culprit.

When you hear “Toronto,” are images of totem poles and children building castles on a sandy beach the first scenes that come to mind? One suspects these were not the prime attractions for 1950s travelers either (though the ROM would have been one of the few places in the region to publicly display aboriginal works at the time). Did the ad agency mix up the clip art intended for Toronto with that for Vancouver? Even the “Exhibition” could apply to both cities, since the drawing is so generic, the scene could be at the PNE as much as the CNE.

Our happy nuclear family may not have gotten to know Toronto in its 125th anniversary year. Father can only laugh at the travel bureau’s folly, especially when they failed to warn him that the city all but shut down on Sundays.

A family moves into one of Toronto’s more fashionable neighbourhoods. In the middle of deciding where Junior’s playpen will fit in the living room, there is a knock at the front door. Standing on the front step is the official neighbourhood greeter from Welcome Wagon.

The new residents are greeted with the finest publications our city has to offer: Toronto Life, the Vancouver Province, and an unidentified Vancouver Sunday paper (our city’s dailies respected Sunday day-of-rest traditions and didn’t launch a regular Sunday edition until the first Sunday Sun rolled off the press in 1973).

Junior is not impressed. Mother feigns interest. The greeter drops their gifts and moves on to the next set of new neighbours four doors down.

Originating in Memphis in 1928, Welcome Wagon doled out its first gifts to Canadians in Vancouver two years later. Perhaps our greeter had been with the organization since its early days and brought along leftovers to recycle when she moved to Toronto, or was confused by tourism ads placed by the Ontario government.

Just watch out if they hand you tickets for a Canucks home game.

BEHIND THE SCENES

Over the years, there were vintage ad columns with similar themes. In some cases, especially in these short early pieces, I’m going to group them together as a single post. These examples also illustrate how, especially if time was tight, I used my imagination to write scenarios for what was going on in each ad, a habit I’m tempted to revive when I start rolling out fresh material on this site.

ADDITIONAL MATERIAL

One historical note: there were earlier attempts to launch “Sunday” papers in Toronto, even if they weren’t necessarily published that day. To circumvent Toronto’s blue laws, the Toronto Sunday World was distributed late Saturday night beginning in 1891. A well-packaged paper, it outlasted the demise of the World in 1921, being published by the Mail and Empire until it was sold to Star Weekly in 1924 (good luck finding copies of those final three years, as major institutions don’t hold it on microfilm). The Telegram briefly experimented with a Sunday edition in the 1950s, but it didn’t last a year.